Interventions for people living with dementia in nursing homes are often judged by cognitive scores, but for residents and carers alike, day-to-day independence matters just as much. An interprofessional research group at Karolinska Institutet and Stockholms Sjukhem reported in Alzheimer's and Dementia that a deliberately simple programme, 12 weeks of repeated daily sit-to-stand exercises plus one to two protein-enriched nutritional drinks a day, was associated with reduced care needs among residents with dementia.
The work is a retrospective analysis of the OPEN study, covering 102 residents of eight nursing homes in the Stockholm area, and tracked how much help residents needed with tasks such as hygiene, dressing and moving around. Across all residents no clear differences emerged, but within dementia units the intervention group improved enough to require less care time than controls, with better physical ability and signs after three months that participants managed more everyday tasks independently. The earlier OPEN study had already shown gains in physical function, muscle mass and nutritional status.
Anders Wimo of Karolinska's Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society cautions that these were secondary analyses rather than the trial's primary endpoints, so the results should be read as promising signals to confirm rather than settled fact. Funding came from the Gamla Tjanarinnor Foundation and from Danone Nutricia Research, which supplied the nutritional drinks but had no role in data collection or in the final analyses.